Bobby Barry

The word raï means opinion. Singers used to drop it into a line while they worked out what to say next, a placeholder that turned into a genre name. That detail tells you what this music was built for: improvisation, in front of people, with no script.

Joni was in the middle of her world tour, having played in Japan, New Zealand and Australia. Concertgoers in Sydney reported how she’d altered the lyrics to ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ to support the campaign against the Franklin Dam. It was the country’s biggest environmental movement to date and would succeed in halting the project in Tasmania just a few months later.

To name an album filled with fourteen hyper-detailed narratives, Half-Told Tales is something of a misnomer. If anything, a hint of vagueness wouldn’t go amiss – see the pungent: “He examines his excretions, the brown piss and yellow shit,” in ‘Gape’. Perhaps it’s Celtic modesty creeping in.